A New Life In The Beast World

"Is something the matter?" Finn suddenly asked, bringing the tiger beastman out of his mini daze. "Shall I take over?"

For some reason, the rabbit beastman felt like he was in danger. Which seemed strange to him. Theo was usually a pretty easy going beastman. Especially as a predator type beastman.

Granted he had only ever met a predator type beastman once, so it wasn’t like he had a proper say in the matter. But he’d been told by many of his elders to watch out for them.

They were arrogant, rude and aggressive according to what he’d been told. And that they looked down at prey beastmen like himself, thinking they were beneath them.

Theo mostly acted the opposite of that which was probably why the other rabbit beastman were so at ease with him. But today... things seemed different.

His instincts were telling him he was in trouble, yet he couldn’t understand why. Usually, they weren’t wrong.

"It’s fine." Theo grumbled, going back to grind the rest of the clay. "I’m almost done anyway."

Finn pursed his lips, wanting to ask him if it was really fine, but Serena returned, handing the tiger beastman a cup of water. He stopped working and drank it all down in one gulp before thanking her.

She then turned to Finn, asking him if he wanted some water to which he immediately replied no. After checking that Theo didn’t want any more water too, Serena headed back to the hut.

The air got tense once more and Finn tried to focus his attention on what Theo was doing. He was interested in the whole process - the only reason why he even came by so early.

Honestly, the whole idea of molding clay into other things had piqued his curiosity. The village normally only used it for the huts, mixing bits of straw and dirt into the clay as they molded it around the wooden frames.

No one had really thought about molding it for other things. Would it even work well molded into other things? Serena said she was planning on making storage items from it.

And he was curious to see how that would work.

Serena soon returned with a small bucket of water, setting it down next to the bucket of ground up clay. She then turned to Finn and said, "While Theo finishes up, help me carry some stuff."

The rabbit beastman nodded his head in understanding, glad for the chance to get away. When they got to the hut, Serena told him to take the bucket of sand back over to Theo.

She then headed back inside to get some other items they needed - mainly the linen pillowcases she got from the system. It was cheating a little on her part, but it wasn’t like there wasn’t going to be cloth in the future.

She just didn’t have it now considering that her cloth making knowledge was locked behind some stupid mission.

Serena also grabbed the bucket of wet clay they had prepared the previous day. Thankfully, it seemed that leaving overnight to separate had been a good idea. The water was a little murky, but otherwise it was looking good.

She could probably move onto the next step today. Serena headed back over to the two beastman, Theo just finishing up with grinding up the clay.

"We’ll finish up with the dry method and then move onto the wet method." Serena explained, setting the items down. "You’re going to need to do some more labour, Theo, so let me know if you need a break. Same goes for you Finn."

The two beastmen nodded their heads in agreement before Finn asked, "So... what is the sand for?"

"I’m mixing it with the clay." Serena answered, adding a few bowls of sand into the bucket of ground up clay. "It’s meant to help... temper the clay, so when we put them in the fire they won’t break. Of course, that’s if I get the measurements right. If they break it’s either because I added too little sand or I didn’t do the firing process right."

Right now, she was doing about a 4:1 ratio - four parts of clay for every one part of sand - which was the usual ratio for most clay. Some clays did need more and sometimes even less, so for now she was going with the standard.

Additionally, sand wasn’t the only material she could use to temper the clay. Things like volcanic ash, ground pot shards, ground up rock, ground up sea shells or diotomatious earth worked too, but she didn’t have those available right now.

But they would be good to experiment with too. Pottery shards would probably be the next easiest to use considering all her experimenting. But that was for much later.

Right now her mission was getting the methods right and figuring out which one was the better method to use.

Of course, Finn was confused by her words and questioned, "Why are you putting the clay into the fire? Wouldn’t drying it in the sun be enough?"

"Funny enough no." Serena mused. "Even putting them in a pit of fire isn’t the best solution. You have to use a kiln, it’s a chamber where you burn things at high temperatures, to make proper pottery... As for the why, I’m not sure exactly. It’s just how things are done."

"I see..." Finn pressed his lips together, gears turning in his head once more.

He suddenly understood why no one really thought to make other things from clay. Or rather they may have tried and found that the process was much more complicated. Still, he had one more question.

"Why do you know so much, Serena?" Finn asked suddenly, making both Serena and Theo freeze at his question. "Your knowledge seems greater than some of the city beastmen... Advancements that could change how all beastmen live. And you share it so freely too."

Well, I should’ve seen that one coming. Serena muttered to herself, relaxing her body as she tried to figure out a way to answer such a loaded question.

Finn was a smart beastman, constantly thinking about how things worked so he could build things. He enjoyed things that challenged his intellect and made him improve his skills.

So, honestly, it shouldn’t have been surprising that he was one of the few to clock in on the fact Serena’s wealth of knowledge was not normal. If anything, it was strange that she had so much.

"I..." Serena opened her mouth, but the words left her. Finally, she sighed, "I... I can’t really say."

"What do you mean you can’t-" Finn started.

But Theo interrupted him and added, "Serena took an oath of silence when she learnt this knowledge... She could share it, but is never allowed to say how she got the knowledge."

Serena almost let out a sigh of relief at the tiger beastman’s words, thankful for the cover. It was the second time he had covered for her and she was grateful.

It made her glad that she had told Theo the truth, making it easier for the beastman to help her hide the truth. Although a dark part of her mind would say - two can never keep a secret.

But she quickly shoved that thought down. Theo was trustworthy. He had plenty of chances to betray her and he hadn’t. Instead, he stuck up for her, lying to cover what she couldn’t explain.

But Mark did the same... It’s only a matter of time.

Serena gulped at the thought, hating herself for thinking such a thing. She needed to stop thinking that way. Not everyone was bad... She needed to have a little more faith.

However, changing one’s mindset took time. Especially when it was so deeply embedded in her.

"Oh..." Finn murmured in surprise, bringing Serena out of her spiraling daze. He noticed Serena seemed upset and added, "I... I didn’t mean to push. I-I was just curious."

He always had been warned that his curiosity would get him into trouble one day and it seemed like it had. He hadn’t meant to offend Serena and now was worried that she might not want to have anything to do with him.

Which was bad.

There was so much he had yet to learn and needed to find out. He couldn’t have things cut off now. Not when he finally found something new to challenge himself with.

"It’s fine, Finn. You didn’t know, so it was an innocent question... Just please don’t ask such things again." Serena coughed. "And in any case, we should probably stop messing around and get to work. Lunch still needs to be prepared and it’s getting late. I don’t want to spend the whole day on this."

That last bit was a bit of an exaggeration, it was going to take a couple of days to complete everything. But it did its job in getting both beastmen to focus back on the task at hand - processing clay.